


The Boy with the Pretty Smile

by blue_wonderer



Series: Olivarry Week 2017 [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Barry didn't end up with the Wests, Barry was dealt a bad hand after Nora was killed, Day 1: Dark!Olivarry, M/M, Olivarry, Olivarry Week 2017, Vigilante!Oliver, dark!Olivarry, intrepid reporter iris, it's implied - Freeform, still killing people first and asking questions later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 05:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_wonderer/pseuds/blue_wonderer
Summary: (In the end, it happens so fast that you’re not even sure which one killed you.)Barry doesn't get adopted by the Wests. No one stops Oliver from the murderous path he first took as The Vigilante. Harrison Wells is still Eobard Thawne, but a darker Barry and Oliver do not imprison him after they bring him down together. So when Iris West, a promising young journalist at CCPN, stumbles upon a dark scene, she has no meaning Barry. She's just another person who discovered their identities.





	The Boy with the Pretty Smile

You’re going to die. 

You were going to meet Eddie. You were going to sing karaoke and sip wine and you were going to kiss him and love him through the entire fucking night tonight. Tomorrow you were going to talk to your boss, you were going to demand that he consider your stories. You were going to make him _listen_. 

You had such plans. 

*

It was another anonymous tip to the whereabouts of Harrison Wells, the scientist who had gone missing from the ruinous remains of STAR Labs a month ago. The tips and sightings were dwindling after a month, but still there had been eleven other tips just that day. This one wasn’t special. 

But you follow it anyway. Because you need a big story. A big break. You know about the upcoming layoffs, heard them talking about how “the new hires are just lacking talent these days”. You think you’re one of the ones they talk about, and you know you’re not lacking talent, just _opportunity_. So while CCPN mostly ignored the tip, you take it.

Besides, it is only a little out of the way from where you are planning on meeting Eddie tonight. 

It’s a STAR Labs hangar, huge and abandoned. It seems like a lot of ground to cover in the short time you have and you know if you are late Eddie just call in the National Guard if you were in trouble. But you won’t be in trouble. It’s a dead end. CCPN and the CCPD checked out this hangar weeks ago. 

So you’re as surprised as anyone when you hear voices, low murmurs echoing spookily off the metal walls and high ceilings of the hangar. You duck down, turn on your phone’s camera with one hand and grip the pepper spray hard with the other. 

You find Harrison Wells first. Or what’s left of him. 

You avert your eyes, squeeze them tight, and lift your camera to take a dozen blind photos. The negative burns in your eyelids, though. The scientist strung up, chest flayed, throat slit, tongue fat and swollen between white lips. His wheelchair is nowhere in sight. You bury your face in your wrist because your hands are full, pressing hard against your mouth to keep in the scream, cutting the inside of your lips with your teeth. 

“It’s a weird newspaper from the future, Barry,” a voice says quietly. You swallow and move so you can try to find the source of the voice. You resolutely avoid looking in the direction of the body. 

“I know, I know,” the other voice, lighter, also male, responds. 

You peek around, swallowing thickly when you realize that there’s no way to get closer and still hide, wondering if you’ll make too much noise now if you turn and run. 

And then you find the source of the voices and your heart tries to punch its way out of your chest. 

It’s _Oliver Queen._ A propped up and shirtless Oliver Queen with blood-soaked bandages wrapped around his torso is the least probable thing you expected to find in this abandoned hangar, yet here he is. There’s another man sitting there, his back to to you, who is unwrapping the bandages. There’s fresh gauze on one side of him as he piles the bloody one on the other side. 

Then you see the bow and arrow. The dark green pants. The dark green jacket with a hood hanging on the back of a chair. 

It’s the Vigilante of Starling City. _Oliver Queen is the Vigilante._ At large for the past three years, he started off by killing one-percenters before branching off to drug traffickers and kidnappers and other members of the criminal element. He targets all criminals without discretion, from rapists to convenience store robbers, and he never leaves a target alive. 

With widening eyes you take in the man at Queen’s side. You can’t see his face, but you see his suit. Black, with a cowl hanging about his shoulders. A speedster given powers by the Particle Accelerator explosion earlier in the year. He has no moniker, at least none that the local news channels can seem to agree on. The Streak. The Blur. Black Flash. Silhouette. Nightshade. Early on, he killed exactly three people. There was nothing in common with the three of them. The first was a convict, who was serving a stint in solitary for killing a hapless prisoner at Iron Heights—a former dentist, you think. Or maybe it was a former doctor. The speedster had killed him when he was still in solitary, and it had taken until the prisoner’s next meal before anyone even realized what had happened. The second was wholly unremarkable. A middle manager at the local brewery, he and his wife were foster parents. Following his death, several stories emerged about his abuse of some of their previous foster children. 

The third was your dad. A cop. A single father. _Dad._

There are no other casualties associated with the dark speedster, though there were several instances of thievery reported in Central and the surrounding cities. There are no real stories on him, just speculation. He’s too fast. A shadow in the corner of the eye. A ghost story. 

“Still can’t believe he’s gone,” the lighter voice, the Black Flash, murmurs. “I can’t believe—that means that they’re all finally _gone_. I don’t know—I don’t know what this means, Ollie.” 

“Barr,” the Vigilante, Queen, reaches up to cup the side of the Black Flash’s face. “Barry, it means you’re free. No one is left to hurt you.” 

“That’s just it,” Barry breathes, diligent hands pausing in his work. “There’s no one left. With Dad—with what happened at Iron Heights, I—even Eobard has been there my whole life, in his sick way, and I… don’t have anyone else.” 

Oliver reaches up with his other hand, pain written on his face, but pulls Barry down into a soft kiss. “What am I, then?” 

And it’s all just so wrong. There’s—there’s a _inhumanely mangled corpse_ not twenty feet away from them. Blood is still dripping sluggishly, pulled by gravity, onto the floor beneath feet that sway gently with the air currents in the hangar. And they’re kissing each other, like they’re _humans_ instead of _monsters_. 

You swallow down bile and start to back away. You don’t make a sound, you _don’t_. But you hear Queen say, “There’s someone here.” 

And then there’s a rush of wind, a tilt of vertigo, and you’re on your knees three feet away from The Vigilante and The Black Flash. Your hands are tied behind you with gauze. 

Oliver Queen’s eyes are sharp enough to cut you. The bow is in his hands, though it is not drawn. The pain that was on his face earlier is completely hidden away. The Black Flash has your phone and is thumbing through the contents. 

He’s young, younger than Queen. Pale skin. Freckles. Thick brown hair. Wide mouth. He’s beautiful. They both are achingly beautiful. “You saw Thawne,” he says and you were scared before but you’re terrified now because _what could they want with Eddie?_ “Took a picture of him.” The Black Flash looks up, shows Oliver the picture of Wells. 

“Did she send it to anyone?”

“No.” 

“Good.” Oliver pulls back the arrow and The Black Flash turns his gaze to yours. It’s an incredibly sad expression and suddenly you _know_. 

“You’re… you’re the boy that was in my class. Years ago.” You breathe, jaw dropping open in disbelief, and you can’t see anything else but the little boy with the round cheeks and perpetually happy smile. “We were… we were eleven. We used to write notes to each other in class. Barry. Barry Allen.” 

Barry Allen, the beautiful boy with the pretty smile. The beautiful boy who’s father killed his mother. You were neighbors. Your dad had been the first on the scene. He’d arrested Barry’s father. 

You had heard Barry’s screams even from inside your own house. _“He didn’t do it! He didn’t do it! Stop! Stop! Don’t take him away, too! Don’t take my dad away, too!”_

“You killed my dad,” you choke. “It was _you_.” The boy with the pretty smile. 

Barry just tilts his head, the sad expression still in place. “I’m sorry that someone discovered us. I’m sorry that it was you.” 

You’re going to die. In that moment, you know. There will be nothing you can do. You should be sipping on a glass of wine and singing karaoke with Eddie right now, but you’re going to die instead. 

“I can’t have anyone know who I am,” Oliver says, voice like gravel, the voice of The Vigilante. “I have a sister.” 

“No one can know,” Barry whispers. “He’s all I have. I am so sorry.” 

In the end, it happens so fast that you’re not even sure which one killed you. 

You had such plans. 

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this very fast, because I've been telling myself, "No, you're not going to participate in Olivarry Week, you don't have the time" for the past month and then, three hours before the end of day one I think, "I'm going to write for Olivarry Week!!!!!!!! :D :D :D"


End file.
